The Kodak i3200 Scanner delivers a level of speed, input capacity, and maximum daily volume suitable for a large workgroup or office with relatively heavy-duty scan needs.

The Kodak i3200 Scanner ($4,495) is the least expensive model in Kodak Alaris's line of departmental-level document scanners. It's also a strong contender for a large workgroup or office that needs to scan at larger than letter and legal size. The 250-sheet input capacity, combined with the rated speed of 50 pages per minute (ppm) and 100 images per minute (ipm)—with one image on each side of a page—can make quick work of large stacks of paper. The recommended duty cycle of up to 15,000 pages per day adds the promise of being rugged enough for the task.

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There's no chance you'll mistake the i3200 for a model designed for personal use or even for a small workgroup. Much like the Kodak i2900 that I reviewed last year, it looks more like a monochrome laser printer than a scanner.

The i3200 measures 9.4 by 17.0 by 14.6 inches (HWD) and it weighs 35 pounds. As with any number of laser printers, its output bin is molded into the top of the scanner, and its 250-sheet input tray pivots down in front to add roughly six more inches to the depth. One difference from most lasers is that the input tray is wide enough to take letter-size paper in Landscape orientation, which also means you can feed tabloid-size (11-by-17-inch) paper in Portrait orientation. The input tray includes a six-inch extension you can pull out as needed for the larger paper sizes. The maximum paper size for the automatic document feeder (ADF) is 12 by 34 inches, but Kodak Alaris says you can manually feed paper as long as 160 inches.

Basics and SetupOne of the i3200's more useful touches is the control panel, with an easy-to-read backlit LCD, plus control buttons that let you choose a scan profile and then start the scan. The LCD is big enough, with three rows of 18 characters, to show descriptive profile names when you scroll through the choices.

The descriptions, which you can define as part of the profiles in the scan utility, make it easy to find the right profile before you press the scan button. My only complaint is that the Kodak Alaris software limits you to a maximum of nine profiles. With descriptive text, it would easy to choose from a longer list, and you should have the option to define them if you need them.

Unlike the Kodak i2900, the i3200 doesn't include a flatbed. However, you can add one as an option, with both legal-size ($495) and tabloid-size ($1,400) versions available. According to Kodak Alaris, either flatbed will connect directly to your computer by USB cable, although you can't use the flatbed unless you also have the i3200 or another supported scanner also installed on that computer.

Setup for the i3200 is typical for a scanner that connects by USB cable. As is standard for scanners in this price range, the supplied software doesn't include any application programs. Any office that needs this level of scan capability will almost certainly have all the programs it needs already, and the included Twain, ISIS, and WIA drivers will you scan from virtually any Windows program that includes a scan command. In addition, Kodak Alaris says that Linux drivers are available for downloading from its website at this writing, and Mac drivers should be available soon.

Along with the drivers, Kodak Alaris includes the same two scan utilities that come with most of its other scanners. Choosing between the two depends on which one better fits your needs. For my tests, I used the Kodak SmartTouch scan utility, which includes built-in optical character recognition (OCR), and can scan to the image PDF, searchable PDF, and editable text formats we need for our standard test suite.

PerformanceFor scanning to a PDF image file, using the scanner's default settings of 200 pixels per inch (ppi) and black and white mode, I clocked our standard 25-sheet, 50-page test document at 37ppm and 74ipm. That's substantially slower than the rated 50ppm and 100ipm, but it includes the total time from giving the scan command to finishing writing the file to disk. Subtract the lag before and after the scan itself, and the time just for scanning was actually better than the rating, at roughly 54ppm and 107ipm. At 300 ppi, I got essentially identical results.

Also on the plus side, the i3200 delivers fast times for scanning to searchable PDF format, which is generally more important for most document management applications. Scanning our standard 25-sheet, 50-page document to searchable PDF format took 1 minute, 6 seconds at 200ppi. As a point of comparison, the Kodak i2900, with a faster rated speed, took 1:09.

The results for our OCR tests are less straightforward, but also a plus. At the default 200ppi, the accuracy is disappointing, with the scanner making at least one mistake on our Times New Roman test page at all sizes smaller than 12 points, and on our Arial test page at all sizes smaller than 10 points. At 300ppi, however, it read the Times New Roman page at 6 points and the Arial page at 8 points without a mistake. The moral here is that it pays to ignore the default settings and use the higher resolution.

If you don't need the i3200's ability to scan at tabloid-size and larger, you can save some money by buying a lower-cost alternative like the Kodak i2900, which is limited to a maximum 8.5-inch-wide paper, but will also give you a letter-size flatbed suitable for book scanning.

If you want a letter-size flatbed, but also want the Kodak i3200 Scanner's ability to handle larger paper sizes, take a look at the Editors' Choice Kodak i3250 Scanner, which is similar to the i3200 in most ways, but with a flatbed added. That said, if you don't need a letter-size flatbed, do need to scan larger than legal-size pages, and can take good advantage of the fast speed and heavy-duty scan capability, the i3200 is a potentially excellent choice for a large workgroup or office.

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About the Author

M. David Stone is an award-winning freelance writer and computer industry consultant. Although a confirmed generalist, with writing credits on subjects as varied as ape language experiments, politics, quantum physics, and an overview of a top company in the gaming industry. David is also an expert in imaging technologies (including printers, moni... See Full Bio

Kodak i3200 Scanner

Kodak i3200 Scanner

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